Do I have an eating disorder or just unhealthy eating habits?
With current trends online fluctuating between body positivity and how to make your body as small as possible, it is hard to find the balance when fueling our bodies. As an eating disorder therapist, I preach balance daily when discussing food intake with my clients. In a world of GLP-1s (glucagon-like peptide-1), classic diet fads, and tiktok trends, how do you know if your eating habits are healthy or unhealthy? And what is the difference between unhealthy eating habits and an eating disorder?
What are healthy vs unhealthy eating habits?
First, let’s define healthy eating habits and unhealthy eating habits. A healthy eating habit is defined by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center as habits that help the body grow and increase confidence compared to anxiety around food. This can look like eating balanced meals (protein, whole grains, fruits, veggies, and healthy fats), listening to hunger and fullness cues, moving your body regularly, and enjoying treats and special foods in moderation. Unhealthy eating behaviors are defined as patterns that can harm physical or emotional health such as ignoring hunger cues, restricting, or eating too little, and trying to lose weight quickly. UPMC also notes harmful pattern such as exercising excessively, feeling shame or stress around food, eating processed foods with little nutrition, and cutting out entire food groups (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center [UPMC], 2025).
If we use this definition, healthy eating habits incorporate balanced foods and movement and prioritizing healthier relationships with food and your body. Unhealthy eating habits can create a hostile relationship with food and your body, resulting in unrealistic goals, cycles of guilt and anxiety, and overall limiting experiences in your life. With this understanding, the focus moves to the difference between unhealthy eating behaviors and an eating disorder.
What is an eating disorder?
According to the University of California, Los Angeles, an eating disorder is defined as a mental illness that involves abnormal and unhealthy behaviors, thoughts, and emotions centered around food (Sievert, 2023). Eating disorders can result in serious physical and psychological consequences that can heavily impact someone’s daily functioning such as malnutrition, electrolyte imbalances, organ damage, anxiety, depression, and sometimes death in more severe cases. Diagnosis is based on a combination of factors, including the type, frequency, persistence, associated distress, functional impairment, and diagnostic criteria. Someone can have a serious eating disorder without appearing extremely underweight or engaging in behaviors that seem "severe" to others.
Eating disorders can be classified in the following types:
“Anorexia Nervosa: A condition characterized by a fear of gaining weight, a distorted body image, and extreme food restriction.
Bulimia Nervosa: A condition characterized by binge eating followed by purging behaviors, such as self-induced vomiting, fasting, or excessive exercise.
Binge Eating Disorder: A condition characterized by repeated episodes of binge eating. During these episodes, an individual consumes large amounts of food in a short period of time. They also feel a lack of control over their eating.
Pica: A condition characterized by the persistent eating of non-food items, such as hair, dirt, or chalk.
Rumination Disorder: A condition characterized by the repetitive regurgitation and rechewing of food after eating.
Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID): A condition characterized by a selective avoidance of certain foods or food groups. This can lead to malnutrition or weight loss.
Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder (OSFED): A condition that includes eating disorder symptoms that do not fully meet the criteria for any of the above disorders” (Sievert, 2023).
I will also add Orthorexia Nervosa, though not officially a diagnosis in the DSM-5 TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - Text Revision, Fifth Edition), orthorexia is described as an obsession with healthy eating with associated restrictive behaviors (Koven & Abry, 2015). Often being described as a fixation on eating foods that are clean/pure.
Do I have an eating disorder or just unhealthy eating habits?
This is a tough question to ask yourself and may be a great question to explore with a professional that specializes in eating disorders/disordered eating behaviors or a trusted medical provider that has a brief understanding of these behaviors. For the sake of this blog, the answer to your question would rely on frequency and severity of the behaviors centered around food. How often are you thinking of food? How often are you thinking of calories, macros, and restricting food because of the numbers? How important is exercise to you and why? How do you feel if you have a rest day? As an eating disorder specialist that also supports clients with disordered eating behaviors, I like to focus on consistency of behaviors, and how they make you feel. I am also paying attention to the numbers associated with these behaviors such as weight loss or weight gain, heart rates and blood pressure, lab work, frequency/intensity of workouts, and frequency of disordered behaviors.
When to seek help?
If you are struggling with anything listed above, please know you are not alone and you do not have to struggle on your own. Life does not have to consist of yoyo diets, social media trends, and hatred toward your body. Your day does not need to involve math, shame, fear, or avoidance. If you're experiencing disordered eating, body image concerns, or symptoms of an eating disorder, therapy can provide a supportive space to better understand your relationship with food and begin recovery. If you're ready to take the next step, contact Golden Psychotherapy to schedule a consultation and learn whether online eating disorder therapy is right for you.
References:
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. (2025). Healthy vs. unhealthy eating behaviors: What families should know [PDF]. https://dam.upmc.com/-/media/ccp/specialty-services/documents/healthy-habits/healthy-eating-behaviors.pdf
Sievert, D. (2023, February 27). Eating disorder symptoms, types, and treatment. UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine.https://medschool.ucla.edu/news-article/eating-disorder-symptoms-types-and-treatment
Koven, N. S., & Abry, A. W. (2015). The clinical basis of orthorexia nervosa: Emerging perspectives. Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 11, 385–394. https://doi.org/10.2147/NDT.S61665
